“Listen. I remember one case particularly. It was some fight that took place several months ago—I forget the contestants. One of the editors of the “Courier-Journal” told me he intended to make a good winning. He didn’t hope; he said he intended. He said he was on the inside and was betting on the number of rounds. He told me the fight would end in the nineteenth. This was the night before. And the next day he triumphantly called my attention to the fact that it had ended in that very round. I didn’t think anything of it one way or the other. I was not interested in prize-fighting then. But I am now. At the time it seemed quite in accord with the vague conception I had about fighting. So you see, it isn’t all fairy tales, is it?”
“I know that fight,” Glendon said. “It was Owen and Murgweather. And it did end in the nineteenth round, Sam. And she said she heard that round named the day before. How do you account for it, Sam?”
“How do you account for a man picking a lucky lottery ticket?” the manager evaded, while getting his wits together to answer. “That’s the very point. Men who study form and condition and seconds and rules and such things often pick the number of rounds, just as men have been known to pick hundred-to-one shots in the races. And don’t forget one thing: for every man that wins, there’s another that loses, there’s another that didn’t pick right. Miss Sangster, I assure you, on my honor, that faking and fixing in the fight game is … is non-existent.”
“What is your opinion, Mr. Glendon?” she asked.
“The same as mine,” Stubener snatched the answer. “He knows what I say is true, every word of it. He’s never fought anything but a straight fight in his life. Isn’t that right, Pat?”
“Yes; it’s right,” Pat affirmed, and the peculiar thing to Maud Sangster was that she was convinced he spoke the truth.
She brushed her forehead with her hand, as if to rid herself of the bepuzzlement that clouded her brain.
“Listen,” she said. “Last night the same editor told me that your forthcoming fight was arranged to the very round in which it would end.”
Stubener was verging on a panic, but Pat’s speech saved him from replying.
“Then the editor lies,” Pat’s voice boomed now for the first time.